Toshiba Mulls a Swiss IPO for Landis+Gyr by September

Toshiba Corp. is considering an initial public offering in Switzerland for energy metering company Landis+Gyr AG by the end of September, raising much-needed cash to bankroll its turnaround.

Landis+Gyr, which makes gear to track household power consumption, is one of several assets Toshiba has put up for sale as it tries to make up for multibillion dollar losses at its Westinghouse nuclear energy unit. The company selected a Japanese-led group last month as preferred bidders for its prized memory chip business.

An IPO on the SIX Swiss Exchange is one of several options on the table and a sale of the business remained an alternative, the Japanese company said in a stock exchange filing Monday. Toshiba was said to have courted acquisition bids for the Swiss subsidiary, which had been expected to fetch about $2 billion. CVC Capital Partners and Hitachi Ltd. had made a joint offer to buy Landis+Gyr from Toshiba and Innovation Network Corp. of Japan, according to a person familiar with the matter.

“No decisions have been made with regard to either the IPO or the dual-track potential trade sale,” Landis+Gyr Chief Executive Officer Richard Mora said on a call with journalists. “We have a significant amount of interest with regard to Landis+Gyr, both on the trade sale and on the IPO as well.”

Toshiba is selling assets to contend with the bankruptcy of its Westinghouse nuclear business, which may result in a loss of as much as 1.01 trillion yen ($9.2 billion) for the year that ended in March. Toshiba, slated for demotion to the second board of the Tokyo stock exchange, now has until the end of March 2018 to shore up its balance sheet or face delisting.

It bought Landis+Gyr in 2011 for $2.3 billion to boost its energy-management sales. The Tokyo-based company owns a 60 percent stake and INCJ holds the rest of the firm, which makes meters that allow utilities to check energy use remotely and can be connected to equipment that shows customers when rates are highest.

UBS Group AG and Morgan Stanley are joint global coordinators and joint bookrunners for the IPO, with Credit Suisse Group AG and JPMorgan Chase & Co. as additional joint bookrunners, Landis+Gyr said in a statement. Bank Vontobel AG and Mizuho Financial Group Inc. are acting as co-bookrunners.